The passing on and burial of Dikgang Uhuru Moiloa of Dinokana in Lehurutshe two weeks ago shocked me as much as it evoked memories of my arrival in Mahikeng in 1982. Four months from that point, the task ahead was to run the 1985 Census of Bophuthatswana.
Very disturbing was how differential invisibility, a hallmark of apartheid, remained a ubiquitous feature. I came to learn that apartheid changes colours like a chameleon. Sun Tzu’s Art of War was well applied by apartheid and continues to this day. If deception failed, deflection stood in its place — a hall of mirrors, yet with a real pernicious impact.
What was available to me was a printed report on the 1980 Census of Bophuthatswana. It had a map with farm names. I had to select areas I should visit to acquaint myself with the task at hand. A random sample from the list worked well for me. With the team at the head office, we visited the first selected area on the map.
As we approached the village called Mantjiesvallei in the report, we stopped to ask whether we had arrived. The villager we asked looked surprised and lost, for he did not know of Mantjiesvallei. Of course, just like an apartheid steward, I showed him the map and said here it is it appears on the map. The villager drew a blank and said this is not Mantjiesvallei, this is Dinokana.
Then we asked for the seat of the chief. We were directed. But with doubt pestering us, we stopped and asked for Mantjiesvallei again just under two kilometres further on. The same answer prevailed. Doubt filled my mind — how is what is documented not known? Finally we arrived at the chief’s place and were received by the father to Uhuru. We asked whether this is Mantjiesvallei, and Kgosi Moiloa said no, this is Dinokana.
Bain and McKinsey were and remain part of the grand project of a 'Mantjiesvallei in Dinokana'. And if we do not rise to reject Mantjiesvallei as a characterisation of South Africa and instead defend our Dinokana, deception and deflection will ravage the country.
My journey into South Africa started with my discovery of Dinokana.I
n Sun Tzu’s book I discovered hidden meanings. The Art of War remains profoundly relevant as we pay tribute to Moiloa and in how apartheid continues to deploy this strategy in modern cognitive warfare, especially at the GNU level. This is where deception, obfuscation, psychological manipulation and shaping perceptions dominate the battlefield of the human mind. It is inconceivable to find silence in the DA and obfuscation from the ANC benches when Gerrie Fourie of Capitec dismisses the high rate of unemployment as a figment of the statistician-general’s imagination and his cohorts at the mighty organisation.
So what goes on in the boardrooms of white capital and what is the response of black capital when Bain and McKinsey are now authors of the G20, a seemingly flagship project of the nation? This is comical.
To be told these offenders bought justice by paying back the money is undermining the profound effect of collapsing the nervous system of the state, and smacks of obfuscation, deception and malice. Not relating the Bain-McKinsey duo to the dry taps, the hospital bed without medicine, the poor performance of the black child in education confirms Prof Stan Sangweni’s worst fears when he directly addressed the president at the funeral of Dr Zola Skweyiya six years ago.
Bain and McKinsey were and remain part of the grand project of a “Mantjiesvallei in Dinokana”. And if we do not rise to reject Mantjiesvallei as a characterisation of South Africa and instead defend our Dinokana, deception and deflection will ravage the country. A professional civil service, a developmental state and an ethical citizenry will be a mirage of song and dance condemning the black and coloured child to a life of ignorance. Those who hew wood and draw water for the master.
How on earth have we tolerated that after 30 years the percentage of blacks and coloureds students with higher education has remained a minuscule 10% against 70% among Indians and 65% among Whites. How on earth are we even contemplating student debt for education? This is a non-starter argument that condemns blacks and coloureds to a life of demand and supply market economics where financial markets buy their debt and blacklist them long before they can even dream of completing a degree and getting that first job.
The tragedy is that business in South Africa as characterised by Capitec has a target profit as a monopoly beyond which it collects excessive surpluses. So when 8.5-million South Africans receive R350 per month through a bank, and if transactions go through Capitec and even if Capitec charges a rand for the transactions, a minimum of R8.5m per month into Capitec is available, and R300 is available to chain stores per month as excess sales over and above what has historically been available. It is not surprising that the report of the statistician-general shows a phenomenal growth in the share of black purchasing power, which grew from 45% in 2016 to 62% in 2023.
If we had a public service envisioned by Sangweni and Skweyiya, a design for this growth in purchasing power would have been purposefully directed for creating black and coloured businesses, which would see to the education of their children. A Keynesian model would have even suggested a stimulus of R1,000 with drastic increase in demand. But none of that Keynesian thought exists in government.
The report of the statistician-general is very revealing on quintile distribution by race. In this regard it is clear the consumption of these wretched of the earth is aggregated for white banks and white chain stores and puts at least 73% of the white population at the top quintile against a captured minuscule proportion of 13% of the black population, whose masses languish as a consumptive market for the minority who do not have to expand factory of production to harvest profits.
Duncan MMcDougall published seminal work on the U- instead of V-shape determination of profit maximisation. South Africa is trapped in the V shape. The lack of directional intervention instruments of economic power and deferring these substantively to the private sector breed V-shaped profit maximisation determination, and businesses refuse to take risks beyond the V shape when actually an economic intervention, and not only a regulatory one, would create conditions for an U-shaped profit maximisation scenario, thereby allowing industry growth and job creation. This is how using the heavy to shoot at that which is light is economically sound for everyone.
Instead of seeing a break from the yoke of Bain and McKinsey, Business Unity South Africa (Busa), which administratively is led by black people but economically is in white hands, says they paid back the money. Eldrid Jordaanin his book The Silicon Empire vs Social Impact, the David and Goliath Battle correctly argues that fines cannot solve the insatiable appetite of empire. They will pay any fine in their sleep and capture more as they do. Bain and McKinsey are now the authors of the script of South Africa G20.
This unconscionable conduct is not one Skweyiya and Sangweni would stand for. It has no other name than a continuation of apartheid par excellence, and the voice of black business is but a faint distant through a broken-line irritant. A Mantjiesvallei allowed to live in Dinokana. Dikgang Uhuru Moiloa would have refused a modern-day Mantjiesvallei to disguise as Dinokana.
• Dr Pali Lehohla is a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa
For opinion and analysis consideration, email opinions@timeslive.co.za
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